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Modelling the Entire Great Lakes and the Ottawa River
Watershed
Nick KouwenDepartment of Civil Engineering
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON ,Canadahttp://www.watflood.ca
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With a large amount of help from:
Environment Canada Alain Pietroniro (Watershed setup)Pierre Pellerin (Synoptic & NWM data)Champa Neal (Flow data)
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Geography Lesson
St. Mary’s R.
St. Clair R.
Detroit R.
Niagara R.
St. Lawrence R.
Superior
MichiganHuron
GB
Erie
Ontario
Ottawa R.
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WATFLOOD Features:
Primary application is flood forecasting and flood studies
Long time series for climate studies and frequency analysis
Ability to model regions from a few km2 to Millions of km2
Automated watershed setup (ENSIM, MAPMAKER, TOPAZ)
Optimal use of gridded data eg. Land cover, DEM’s, NWP model output, Radar data
Universally applicable parameter set
Fast
Very easy to use interface for routine work
Pick-up truck version
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Highlights:
ENSIM – pre and post processor
Grouped Response Units GRU’s
Wetland model – coupled river-wetland hydraulics (also bank storage)
Tracer model – flow sourcing (glaciers, groundwater, wetlands, etc.)
There are many other useful features
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EnsimHydrologic
Developed by the Canadian Hydraulics Centre CHC
Funded by Environment Canada
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Start with a DEMS. Ontario in this case
EnsimHydrologic work space
L. Huron
L. Ontario
Waterloo
Toronto
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Delineate drainage &Watersheds automatically
Specify WATFLOOD grid.
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Zoom & edit data
Extract WATFLOOD data
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Watflood Theory
GRU’s :Grouped Response Units
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Elmira LANDSAT
• 10 km grid (or whatever)
• 100 km^2 area receives equal meteorological input
• group all areas with similar hydrological characteristics within a grid for 6 hydrological computations/grid
• some people model each pixel or each field separately - ok for science, not operations (10^4 computations/grid)
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Group Response Unit- to deal with basin heterogeneity
Physically Based Streamflow
Routing
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Percent Coniferous ForestSource: USGS GLOBAL LAND COVER
CHARACTERISTICS DATA BASE
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Percent CropsSource: USGS GLOBAL LAND COVER CHARACTERISTICS DATA BASE
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Hydrological ModellingPrecipitation
Interception
Surface RunoffUnsaturated
Zone
SaturatedZone
Depression Storage
Infiltration
WettingFront
Interflow
Base Flow
Evapotranspiration
Channel Flow
Wetlands
Model executed for each land cover GRUon each Grid each Hour
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Previous experience:
Original model setup & calibration for the Grand River watershed in S. Ontario
Applications include: Columbia River N. of US Border – 50,000 km2
Mackenzie River ~ 1,7000,000 km2
Rhone, Rhine, Po and Danube rivers as part of MAP (Mesoscale Alpine Project)
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MAP (Fall 1999)
Computed flows compared to observed flows for the Danube River in Germany & Austria
Met data from the high resolution MC2 Numerical Weather Model
MC2 & WATFLOOD ~3 km grid
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Tracer Module Components
Tracer 1
Sub-basin separation
Tracer 2
Land-cover separation
Tracer 3
Rain-on-stream tracer
Tracer 4
Flow-type separation- surface
- interflow- baseflow
Tracer 5
Snow-melt as a fn(flow-type) - surface + surface melt- interflow + melt drainage- baseflow + interflow melt drainage
Tracer 6
Glacial Melt- surface
- interflow- baseflow
Tracer 0
Baseflow separation
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Model verification
E.G. Baseflow has been compared to isotope analysis of streamflow sources
All other model components have been similarly verified
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Great Lakes & Ottawa River Model
Meteorological Data: 6 hour Synoptic data for initial setup for October
2000 – August 2003 3 hour GEM (Global Environmental Model) data
for July & August 2003
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Movie clip is an example of distributed Synoptic Data
(Note the moving Bull’s eyes)
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Synoptic data
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Next movie clip is for July 2003 using GEM data
(GEM is Canada’s operational weather forcasting model)
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Animation of Snow Cover (SWE in mm)
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Animation ofGrid Outflow
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Flow stations: Canada only (to date)
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Computed hydrographs for50 Sub-Watersheds 400-13500 km2
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Lake Routing
St. Mary’s R.
St. Clair R.
Detroit R.
Niagara R.
St. Lawrence R.
Superior
MichiganHuron
GB
Erie
Ontario
Ottawa R.
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Lake Routing Rules (natural state):
St. Marys RiverQ = 824.7*(SUP-181.43)^1.5
St. Clair RiverQ = 82.2*((MHU+STC)/2-166.98)^1.87*(MHU-STC)^0.36
Detroit RiverQ = 28.8*(STC-164.91)^2.28*(STC-ERI)^0.305
Niagara River Q = 558.3*(ERI-169.86)^1.60
St. Lawrence River Q =555.823*(Oswego-0.0014(Year-1985)-69.474)^1.5
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Needs work. Ave. lake levels are ok. Variation is inadequate.Effect of weeds, ice & operations not yet incorporated.
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Summary Great tools are required to model large areas such as the
Great Lakes & Ottawa River basin. Pre-processor – set up watershed files Post-processor – debugging & visualization
GRU’s ensure vastly different hydrological units are represented appropriately at the large scale
Gridded model Efficient ingestion of gridded data: DEM, Land cover,
meteorological data (radar, numerical weather models)
Much tweaking to be done!